Communication methods for ccfi/pcfich in a wireless communication system

ABSTRACT

A method of transmitting a control channel format indicator (CCFI), also known as PCFICH (Physical Control Format Indicator Channel), in case where the length of a coded CCFI is not an integer multiple of three, including mapping a plurality of two-bit CCFI into a codebook with each component codeword having three bits; generating a sequence of codewords selected from the codebook by repeating the selected component codeword for predetermined times; generating a codeword by concatenating the sequence of the selected component codewords with the original CCFI bits; and transmitting the codeword carrying information of CCFI. The method further includes a step of generating a permutation of each of the four codewords by assigning K repetitions of the three-bit component codeword to the number of K resource units respectively and mapping remaining K bits of each of the four codewords separately to the number of K resource units.

CLAIM OF PRIORITY

This application makes reference to, incorporates the same herein, and claims all benefits accruing under 35 U.S.C. §119 from applications earlier filed in the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on 12 Jul. 2007 and there duly assigned Ser. No. 60/929,791, and on 16 Jul. 2007 and there duly assigned Ser. No. 60/929,869, respectively.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for coding a CCFI (Control Channel Format Indicator) channel, also known as PCFICH (Physical Control Format Indicator Channel), and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for coding a CCFI channel using a concatenation of repeated (3,2) codewords and original CCFI bits, for the case where a total result coded length of CCFI is not an integer multiple of three.

2. Description of the Related Art

Three references of the present invention are listed as below.

-   [1]. 3GPP RAN WG1#48bis Chairman's Notes, March 2007, Malta. -   [2]. R1-050271, “Evaluation of Diversity in Evolved UTRA”, Samsung,     RAN1#10bis, Beijing China, April 2005. -   [3]. “Transmit Diversity for Acknowledgement and Category 0 bits in     a Wireless communication System”, earlier filed provisional in the     U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on 26 Apr., 2007 and there duly     assigned Ser. No. 60/924,020 and earlier filed provisional in the     U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on 9 May, 2007 and there duly     assigned Ser. No. 60/924,339.

Reference [3] discusses several approaches of coding and transmit diversity for both the Category 0 bits and ACK/NACK channels.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a technology to multiplex data in frequency domain. Modulation symbols are carried on frequency sub-carriers. The total bandwidth in an OFDM system is divided into narrowband frequency units called subcarriers. The number of subcarriers is equal to the FFT/IFFT size N used in the system. In general, the number of subcarriers used for data is less than N because some of the subcarriers located at the edge of the frequency spectrum are reserved as guard subcarriers. In general, no information may be transmitted on guard subcarriers.

A typical cellular radio system includes a collection of fixed base stations (BS) that define a radio coverage area or a cell. Typically, a non-line-of-sight (NLOS) radio propagation path exists between a base station and a mobile station due to natural and man-made objects that are situated between the base station and the mobile station. As a consequence, the radio waves propagate via reflections, diffractions and scattering. The arriving waves at the mobile station (MS) in the downlink direction (at the BS in the uplink direction) experience constructive and destructive additions because of different phases of the individual waves. This is due the fact that, at high carrier frequencies typically used in the cellular wireless communication, small changes in the differential propagation delays introduces large changes in the phases of the individual waves. When the MS is moving or changes occur in the scattering environment, the spatial variations in the amplitude and phase of the composite received signal will manifest themselves as the time variations known as Rayleigh fading or fast fading. The time-varying nature of the wireless channel requires very high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in order to provide desired bit error or packet error reliability.

Diversity is widely used to combat the effect of fast fading. The idea is to provide the receiver with multiple faded replicas of the same information-bearing signal. On the assumption of independent fading of each of the antenna branches, the probability that the instantaneous SNR is below a certain threshold on each branch is approximately p^(L) where p is the probability that the instantaneous SNR is below the certain threshold on each antenna branch.

The methods of diversity generally fall into the following categories: space, angle, polarization, field, frequency, time and multipath diversity. Space diversity may be achieved by using multiple transmit or receive antennas. The spatial separation between the multiple antennas is chosen so that the diversity branches experience fading with little or no correlation. Transmit diversity uses multiple transmit antennas in order to provide the receiver with multiple uncorrelated replicas of the same signal. Transmit diversity schemes may further be divided into open loop transmit diversity and closed-loop transmit diversity schemes. In an open loop transmit diversity approach, no feedback is required from the receiver. In a known arrangement of a closed loop transmit diversity, the receiver computes the phase and amplitude adjustment that should be applied at the transmitter antennas to maximize the received signal power at the receiver. In another arrangement of the closed loop transmit diversity referred to as selection transmit diversity (STD), the receiver provides feedback information to the transmitter on antennas) to be used for transmission.

Dynamic Category 0 (Cat 0) bits are a LTE terminology used in 3GPP LTE standard body. The role of Cat0 is to support dimensioning (scaling) of the downlink control channel by indicating the number of downlink and uplink scheduling grants. The current working assumption in reference [1] is that the dynamic Cat0 bits have a maximum size of two bits, and the dynamic Cat0 bits should be transmitted once during every subframe where a control channel element (CCE) is present. The information conveyed by Cat0 bits includes, but not limited to, the number of OFDM symbols used for all control channels in the subframe. The transmit diversity of the Cat0 bits is not finalized, and it is the objective of the present invention to provide a simple and efficient transmit diversity scheme that captures both spatial and frequency diversity in the channel. In reference [3], several approaches of coding and transmit diversity have been described for both the Category 0 bits and ACK/NACK channels. In the 3GPP standard RAN1 meeting in May 2007, the Category 0 bits have been renamed as CCFI (Control Channel Format Indicator). In the present invention, one additional coding method is proposed, as well as frequency domain resource mapping methods for the transmission of CCFI channel.

In addition, it was proposed in reference [3] to use a (3,2,2) binary linear code to map the 2 Cat0 bits into a 3-bit codeword c₁c₂c₃, and this codeword belongs to a codebook of size four with a minimum Hamming distance two between any pairs of codewords. One example of the (3,2) codebook in reference [3] is c₁c₁c₂C₃εC₁={111, 100, 010 001}.

Because the size of (3,2) codebook as above presented is three, merely repeating the 3-bit codeword may only be suitable for a case where the length of a coded CCFI is an integer multiple of three. Therefore, it is important to provide a CCFI coding method in a case where the length of a coded CCFI is not an integer multiple of three.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

It is therefore one object of the present invention to provide an improved process and apparatus for solving the above mentioned problems.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a CCFI coding method in a case where the length of a coded CCFI is not an integer multiple of three.

In one embodiment of the present invention, it is proposed to code the CCFI channel using a concatenation of repeated (3,2) codewords and uncoded CCFI bits, for the case where the total codeword length is not an integer multiple of three. Because the size of the (3,2) codebook as above presented is three and thus it is important to provide a CCFI coding method in a case where the length of a coded CCFI is not an integer multiple of three.

As shown in the table below, a mapping between the two bits CCFI and the component codewords in a (3,2) codebook is established.

Component codeword Component codeword CCFI bits c₁c₂c₃ (assuming c₁c₂c₃ (assuming b₁b₂ (3, 2) codebook C₂) (3, 2) codebook C₁) 00 000 111 01 011 100 10 101 010 11 110 001

The length-32 codewords are generated in the following procedures.

(1) A length-3 component codeword c₁c₂c₃ is generated as shown in Table above; (2) the component codeword c₁c₂c₃ is repeated ten times to generate a length-30 sequence; and (3) the length-30 sequence is concatenated with the original CCFI bits b₁b₂.

The resulting four codewords of codebook A corresponding to each codeword of codebook C₂ are:

Codebook A 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 00 (cw1) 011 011 011 011 011 011 011 011 011 011 01 (cw 2) 101 101 101 101 101 101 101 101 101 101 10 (cw 3) 110 110 110 110 110 110 110 110 110 110 11 (cw 4)

In another embodiment of the current invention, when the CCFI has only three states (i.e., CCFI is any three of “00”, “01”, “10” and “11”), then any of the three codewords in the above set may be used to carry the CCFI information.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the codebook generated above is column-wise permuted in order to fit the K1×2 RU resource configuration, which has a total of 4K coded bits. In this permutation method, based on the sequential concatenation of the repeated codewords, K repetitions of 3-bit component codeword are assigned to the K RUs (leaving one bit open at each RU), and then the remaining K bits are mapped separately to the K RUs. Other codewords of codebook A may deviate in the same method. The resulting codebook deviated from codebook A is called Codebook B as shown below. The codebook B may be better than codebook A in fading channels, since a full repetition to an RU is mapped as much as possible.

Codebook B 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 (cw1) 0110 0111 0111 0110 0111 0111 0110 0111 (cw 2) 1011 1010 1011 1011 1010 1011 1011 1010 (cw 3) 1101 1101 1100 1101 1101 1100 1101 1101 (cw 4)

In another embodiment of the current invention, a variation of the codebook A may obtained by mapping the CCFI bits to codebook C1, instead of codebook C2. The same repetition and concatenation used in generating this new codebook, called codebook C.

Codebook C 111 111 111 111 111 111 111 111 111 111 00 (cw1) 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 01 (cw 2) 010 010 010 010 010 010 010 010 010 010 10 (cw 3) 001 001 001 001 001 001 001 001 001 001 11 (cw 4)

In another embodiment of the current invention, same column-wise permutation as stated above is applied to Codebook C in order to generate Codebook D.

Codebook D 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1110 1110 (cw1) 1001 1000 1000 1001 1000 1000 1000 1001 (cw 2) 0100 0101 0100 0100 0101 0100 0101 0100 (cw 3) 0010 0010 0011 0010 0010 0011 0011 0011 (cw 4)

In another embodiment of the current invention, when the CCFI has only three states, any three codewords in a given codebook (e.g, Codebook A, B, C, D, etc) may be used to carry the CCFI information.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

A more complete appreciation of the invention, and many of the attendant advantages thereof, will be readily apparent as the same becomes better understood by reference to the following detailed description when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which like reference symbols indicate the same or similar components, wherein:

FIG. 1 is an illustration of an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) transceiver chain having transmitter chain and receiver chain;

FIG. 2 shows an Alamouti 2×1 space-time diversity scheme;

FIG. 3 shows an Alamouti 2×1 space-frequency scheme;

FIG. 4 shows an example of a method of a column-wise permutation; and

FIGS. 5A and 5B are flowcharts illustrating procedural steps of transmitting and receiving CCFI according to different embodiments of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Three references of the present invention are listed as below.

-   [1]. 3GPP RAN WG1#48bis Chairman's Notes, March 2007, Malta -   [2]. R1-050271, “Evaluation of Diversity in Evolved UTRA”, Samsung,     RAN1#40bis, Beijing China, April 2005 -   [3]. “Transmit Diversity for Acknowledgement and Category 0 bits in     a Wireless communication System”, earlier filed provisional in the     U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on 26 Apr., 2007 and there duly     assigned Ser. No. 60/924,020 and earlier filed provisional in the     U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on 9 May, 2007 and there duly     assigned Ser. No. 60/924,339.

In reference [3], several approaches of coding and transmit diversity are described for both the Category 0 bits and ACK/NACK channels. In the 3GPP standard RAN1 meeting in May 2007, the Category 0 bits have been renamed as CCFI (Control Channel Format Indicator). In the practice of the principle of the present invention, a few additional coding methods as well as frequency domain resource mapping methods for the transmission of CCFI channel are disclosed. Here, the CCFI is also known as PCFICH (Physical Control Format Indicator Channel).

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a technology to multiplex data in frequency domain. Modulation symbols are carried on frequency sub-carriers. FIG. 1 illustrate of an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) transceiver chain having a transmitter chain and a receiver chain. A sample of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) transceiver chain is shown in FIG. 1. At a transmitter chain 100, control signals or data signals are modulated by a modulator 101 and the modulated signals are serial-to-parallel converted by a serial-to-parallel convertor 112. An Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) unit 114 is used to transfer the modulated signal or data from frequency domain to time domain, and the modulated signals trasferred to the time domain is parallel-to-serial converted by a parallel-to-serial convertor 116. A cyclic prefix (CP) or zero prefix (ZP) is added to each OFDM symbol at a CP insertion stage 118 to avoid or alternatively, to mitigate the impact due to multipath fading at a multipath fading channel 122. Signals from cyclic prefix (CP) insertion stage 118 are applied to transmitter front end processing unit 120, RF amplifier 121 and then single or multiple antennas 123. Therefore, the signals transmitted by transmitter chain 100 are received by receiver chain 140. At a receiver chain 140, assuming that perfect time and frequency synchronization are achieved, signals received by receiving single or multiple antennas 125 is applied to receiver front end processing unit 124, are processed at a cyclic prefix (CP) removal stage 126 which removes the cyclic prefix (CP) of the received signal. Signals processed in cyclic prefix (CP) removal stage 126 are further serial-to-parallel converted by a serial-to-parallel convertor 128. A Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) unit 130 transfers the received signals from the time domain to the frequency domain for further processing, including parallel-to-serial conversion by a parallel-to-serial convertor 132 and being demodulation by signal de-modulator 134.

The total bandwidth in an OFDM system is divided into narrowband frequency units called subcarriers. The number of subcarriers is equal to the FFT/IFFT size N used in the system. In general, the number of subcarriers used for data is less than N because some of the subcarriers located at the edge of the frequency spectrum are reserved as guard subcarriers. As a general rule, no information may be transmitted on guard subcarriers.

A typical cellular radio system includes a collection of fixed base stations (BS) that define a radio coverage area or a cell. Typically, a non-line-of-sight (NLOS) radio propagation path exists between a base station and a mobile station due to natural and man-made objects that are situated between the base station and the mobile station. As a consequence, the radio waves propagate via reflections, diffractions and scattering. The arriving waves at the mobile station (MS) in the downlink direction (at the BS in the uplink direction) experience constructive and destructive additions because of different phases of the individual waves. This is due the fact that, at the high carrier frequencies typically used in the cellular wireless communication, small changes in the differential propagation delays introduce large changes in the phases of the individual waves. Additionally, when the MS is moving or changes occur in the scattering environment, the spatial variations in the amplitude and phase of the composite received signal will manifest themselves as the time variations known as Rayleigh fading or fast fading. The time-varying nature of the wireless channel requires very high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in order to provide desired bit error or packet error reliability.

Diversity is widely used to combat the effects of fast fading. The idea is to provide the receiver with multiple faded replicas of the same information-bearing signal. On the assumption of independent fading of the signals broadcast by each of the antenna branches, the probability, that the instantaneous SNR is below a certain threshold on each branch is approximately p^(L), where p is the probability that the instantaneous SNR is below the certain threshold on each antenna branch. L is the number of antenna branches. From a system operation viewpoint, “antenna branch” is also known as “antenna ports”, and it indicates the number of antennas at the base station.

The methods of diversity that are suitable for use fall into the following categories: space, angle, polarization, field, frequency, time and multipath diversity. Space diversity may be achieved by using multiple transmit or receive antennas. The spatial separation between the multiple antennas is chosen so that the diversity branches experience fading with little or no correlation of the signals during the transit between the transmitting and receiving antennas. Transmit diversity uses multiple transmitting antennas in order to provide the receiver with multiple uncorrelated replicas of the same signal. Transmit diversity schemes may further be divided into open loop transmit diversity and closed-loop transmit diversity schemes. In an open loop transmit diversity approach, no feedback is required from the receiver. In one known to arrangement of a closed loop transmit diversity, the receiver computes the phase and amplitude adjustment that should be applied at the transmitter antennas to maximize the received signal power at the receiver. In another arrangement of the closed loop transmit diversity referred to as selection transmit diversity (STD), the receiver provides feedback information to the transmitter on antenna(s) to be used for transmission.

An example of open-loop transmit diversity scheme is the Alamouti 2×1 space-time diversity scheme. FIG. 2 shows an Alamouti 2×1 space-time diversity scheme. In this approach during any symbol period, two data symbols are transmitted simultaneously from the two transmit antennas ANT1 and ANT2. Suppose during the first symbol interval t1, the symbols transmitted from ANT1 and ANT2 are denoted as S₁ and S₂ respectively as shown in FIG. 2. During the next symbol period, the symbols transmitted from ANT1 and ANT2 are -S₂* and S₁* respectively where x* represents the complex conjugate of x. With certain processing at the receiver, original symbols S₁ and S₂ may be recovered. Here, the instantaneous channel gain estimates h1 and h2 on ANT 1 and ANT 2, respectively, are required for faithful recovery at the receiver. This requires separate pilot symbols on both of the antennas in order to provide channel gain estimation at the receiver. The diversity gain achieved by Alamouti coding is the same as that which may be achieved in Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC).

A 2×1 Alamouti scheme may also be implemented in a space -frequency coded form. FIG. 3 shows a 2×1 Alamouti scheme implemented in a space-frequency coded form. In this case, the two symbols are sent on two different frequencies, i.e., subcarriers f1 and f2, for example, on different subcarriers in an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system as shown in FIG. 3. When implemented in a space-frequency coded form in the open-loop transmit diversity scheme, the 2×1 Alamouti space-frequency diversity scheme illustrated by FIG. 3 shows an Alamouti 2×1 space-frequency diversity scheme in which during any symbol period, two data symbols are transmitted simultaneously from the two transmit antennas ANT1 and ANT2. If during the first frequency f1, the symbols transmitted from ANT1 and ANT2 are denoted as S₁ and S₂ respectively as shown in FIG. 3. During the next symbol period, the symbols transmitted from ANT1 and ANT2 are -S₂* and S₁* respectively where x* represents the complex conjugate of x. Original symbols S₁ and S₂ may be recovered by the receiver. Here, the instantaneous channel gain estimates h1 and h2 on ANT 1 and ANT 2, respectively, are required for faithful recovery at the receiver. This requires separate pilot symbols on both of the antennas in order to provide channel gain estimation at the receiver. The diversity gain achieved by Alamouti coding is the same as that which may be achieved in Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC).

The received signals r₁ and r₂ at the mobile station in subcarrier f1, r1, and in subcarrier f2, r2, may be written as:

r ₁ =h ₁ s ₁ +h ₂ s ₂ +n ₁

r ₂ =h ₁ s ₂ *+h ₂ s ₁ *+n ₂  (1)

where h1 and h2 are channel gains from ANT1 and ANT2 respectively. The assumption here is that the channel from a given antenna does not change between subcarriers f1 and f2. The mobile station performs equalization on the received signals and combines the two received signals (r1 and r2) in order to recover the symbols S1 and S2.

$\begin{matrix} {\begin{matrix} {{\hat{s}}_{1} = {{h_{1}^{*}r_{1}} + {h_{2}r_{2}^{*}}}} \\ {= {{h_{1}^{*}\left( {{h_{1}s_{1}} + {h_{2}s_{2}} + n_{1}} \right)} + {h_{2}\left( {{{- h_{1}}s_{2}^{*}} + {h_{2}s_{1}^{*}} + n_{2}} \right)}^{*}}} \\ {= {{\left( {{h_{1}}^{2} + {h_{2}}^{2}} \right)s_{1}} + {h_{1}^{*}n_{1}} + {h_{2}n_{2}^{*}}}} \end{matrix}\begin{matrix} {{\hat{s}}_{2} = {{h_{2}^{*}r_{1}} + {h_{1}r_{2}^{*}}}} \\ {= {{h_{2}^{*}\left( {{h_{1}s_{1}} + {h_{2}s_{2}} + n_{1}} \right)} + {h_{1}\left( {{{- h_{1}}s_{2}^{*}} + {h_{2}s_{1}^{*}} + n_{2}} \right)}^{*}}} \\ {= {{\left( {{h_{1}}^{2} + {h_{2}}^{2}} \right)s_{2}} + {h_{2}^{*}n_{1}} + {h_{1}n_{2}^{*}}}} \end{matrix}} & (2) \end{matrix}$

It may be seen that both the transmitted symbols S1 and S2 achieve full spatial diversity.

The term Dynamic Category 0 (Cat 0) bits is a LTE terminology used by the 3GPP LTE standard body. The role of Cat0 is to support dimensioning (scaling) of the downlink control channel by indicating the number of downlink and uplink scheduling grants. The current working assumption in reference [1] is that the dynamic Cat0 bits have a maximum size of two bits, and should be transmitted during every subframe where a control channel element (CCE) is present. The information conveyed by Cat0 bits includes, but is not limited to, the number of OFDM symbols used for all control channels in the subframe. The transmit diversity of the Cat0 bits is not finalized, and it is one of the objectives of the present invention to provide a simple and efficient transmission and reception diversity scheme that is enable to capture both spatial and frequency diversity in the channel. In reference [3], several approaches of coding and transmit diversity have been described for both the Category 0 bits and ACK/NACK channels. In the 3GPP standard RAN1 meeting in May 2007, the Category 0 bits have been renamed as CCFI (Control Channel Format Indicator). In the present invention, one additional coding method is proposed, as well as frequency domain resource mapping methods for the transmission of CCFI channel.

In addition, it was proposed in reference [3] to use a (3,2,2) binary linear code to map the two Cat0 bits into a 3-bit codeword c₁c₂c₃, and to assign this codeword belongs to a codebook of size four with a minimum Hamming distance two between any pairs of codewords. A linear code (n,k,d) means a code with each codeword length of n coded bits, and each codeword correspond to a message with length k information bits. The minimum hamming distance of the codebook is d. Once the 3-bit codeword is specified, it will be repeated and rate-matched to fit the 2K channel symbols that are going to be used for the Cat0 bits. A (3,2) codebook is a short-hand notation of (3,2,2) code. One example of the (3,2) codebook in reference [3] is c₁c₂c₃εC₁={111, 100, 010 001}.

In one embodiment of the present invention, it is proposed to code the CCFI channel using a concatenation of repeated (3,2) codewords and uncoded CCFI bits, for the case where the total codeword length is not an integer multiple of three. Because the size of (3,2) codebook as above presented is three and thus it is important to provide a CCFI coding method in a case where the length of a coded CCFI is not an integer multiple of three.

For example, when a total number of K 1×2 resource units (RU) are assigned to the CCFI channel, there are 2K channel symbols and 4K channel bits, assuming QPSK modulation on each channel symbol. Here, 1×2 RU occupies one OFDM symbol and two neighboring subcarriers. For example, when K=8 RUs, there are 2K=16 channel symbols and 32 coded bits. 32 is not an integer multiple of three.

As shown in Table 1, a mapping between the 2 bits CCFI and the component codewords in a (3,2) codebook is established. Table 1 is a mapping between CCFI bits and component codewords as shown above. Here, the (3,2) codebook is c₁c₂c₃εC₂={000, 011, 101, 110}. Note the above shown (3,2) codebook is equivalent to c₁c₂c₃ εC₁={111, 100, 010 001}. CCFI bits b₁ and b₂ are original CCFI bits. Component codewords of two (3,2) codebooks C₁ and C₂ corresponding to each state of CCFI bits are shown in Table 1.

TABLE 1 Mapping between CCFI bits and component codewords. Component codeword Component codeword CCFI bits c₁c₂c₃ (assuming c₁c₂c₃ (assuming b₁b₂ (3, 2) codebook C₂) (3, 2) codebook C₁) 00 000 111 01 011 100 10 101 010 11 110 001

Four codewords with length of 32 generated for the CCFI bits b₁b₂ are shown as follows, for the example above. Here, (3,2) codebook C₂ are used. The length-32 codewords are generated by modulator 101 with the following procedural steps.

(1) A length-3 component codeword c₁c₂c₃ is generated as shown in Table 1; (2) the component codeword c₁c₂c₃ is repeated ten times to generate a length-30 sequence; and (3) the length-30 sequence is concatenated with the original CCFI bits b₁b₂. Here, the codeword c₁c₂c₃ is repeated └4K /3┘ times, and the resulting sequence is concatenated with the original CCFI bits b₁b₂. This concatenated bit sequence is the final channel bit sequence to be modulated and mapped into channel symbol. The resulting four codewords of codebook A corresponding to each codeword of codebook C₂ are:

Codebook A 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 00 (cw1) 011 011 011 011 011 011 011 011 011 011 01 (cw 2) 101 101 101 101 101 101 101 101 101 101 10 (cw 3) 110 110 110 110 110 110 110 110 110 110 11 (cw 4)

In another embodiment of the current invention, if the CCFI has only three states (i.e., CCFI is any three of “00”, “01”, “10” and “11”), then any of the 3 codewords in the above set may be used to carry the CCFI information.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the codebook generated above is column-wise permuted to fit the K1×2 RU resource configuration, which has a total of 4K coded bits. FIG. 4 shows an example of a method of a column-wise permutation. In this permutation method, based on the sequential concatenation of the repeated codewords, K repetitions of 3-bit component codeword are assigned to the K RUs (leaving one bit open at each RU), and then the remaining K bits are mapped separately to the K RUs. The permutation of CW4 is illustrated in FIG. 4. Other codewords of codebook A may be deviated in the same method. The resulting codebook deviated from codebook A is called Codebook B as shown below. The codebook B may be better than codebook A in fading channels, since a full repetition to an RU is mapped as much as possible.

Codebook B 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 (cw1) 0110 0111 0111 0110 0111 0111 0110 0111 (cw 2) 1011 1010 1011 1011 1010 1011 1011 1010 (cw 3) 1101 1101 1100 1101 1101 1100 1101 1101 (cw 4)

In another embodiment of the current invention, a variation of the codebook A may obtained by mapping the CCFI bits to codebook C1, instead of codebook C2, as shown in Table 1. The same repetition and concatenation used in generating this new codebook, called codebook C.

Codebook C 111 111 111 111 111 111 111 111 111 111 00 (cw1) 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 01 (cw 2) 010 010 010 010 010 010 010 010 010 010 10 (cw 3) 001 001 001 001 001 001 001 001 001 001 11 (cw 4)

In another embodiment of the current invention, same column-wise permutation as shown in FIG. 4 is applied to Codebook C and Codebook D is obtained.

Codebook D 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1110 1110 (cw1) 1001 1000 1000 1001 1000 1000 1000 1001 (cw 2) 0100 0101 0100 0100 0101 0100 0101 0100 (cw 3) 0010 0010 0011 0010 0010 0011 0011 0011 (cw 4)

In another embodiment of the current invention, when the CCFI has only three states, any three codewords in a given codebook (e.g, Codebook A, B, C, D, etc) may be used to carry the CCFI information.

FIGS. 5A and 5B are flowcharts illustrating procedural steps of transmitting and receiving CCFI according to different embodiments of the present invention.

In FIG. 5A, the procedure of generating Codebooks A and C are presented. When the CCFI is transmitted at a transmitter, two-bit CCFI is mapped to 3-bit codeword of codebook C1 or C2 as shown in Table 1 at step 201, the three-bit codeword is repeated for a predetermined times with the number of the predetermined time being a flooring of quotient └4K /3┘, where K is the number of resource units at step 203, the resulting bit sequence is concatenated with the original CCFI bits at step 205 and thus a final bit sequence is generated and transmitted at transmitting antennas. At the receiver side, the receiving antennas receive the transmitted resulting bit sequence from the transmitter at step 211, a demodulator of the receiver demodulates the received bit sequence at step 213, and the receiver achieves the information carried by CCFI at step 215 and thus the achieved information carried by the CCFI is utilized by the receiver.

In FIG. 5B, the procedure of generating Codebooks B and D are presented. When the CCFI is transmitted at a transmitter, two-bit CCFI is mapped to three-bit codeword of codebook C1 or C2 as shown in Table 1 at step 301, the three-bit codeword is repeated for a predetermined times with the number of the predetermined time being a quotient of 4K/3 where K is the number of resource units at step 303, the resulting bit sequence is concatenated with the original CCFI bits at step 305 and thus a bit sequence is generated. Here, the bit sequence may be illustrated as cw 4 shown in FIG. 4. At step 307, leading K repetitions of the three-bit codeword as shown in Table 1 in the resulting bit sequence is mapped to the number of K resource units respectively with one bit of each of resource units being open, and the remaining K bits of the bit sequence are separately mapped to the open bit of each of the number of K resource units at step 309. Step 307 may be illustrated as the intermediate RU#1-RU#8 each having one bit open as shown in the intermediate bit sequence shown in FIG. 4. Step 309 may be illustrated as the final RU#1-RU#8 each having four bits allocated as shown by the resulting bit sequence shown in FIG. 4. The resulting mapped bit sequences are transmitted by the transmitting antennas. At the receiver side, the receiving antennas receive the transmitted resulting bit sequence from the transmitter at step 311, a demodulator of the receiver demodulates the received bit sequence at step 313, and the receiver achieves the information carried by CCFI at step 315 and thus the achieved information carried by the CCFI is utilized by the receiver.

Modulator 101 and IFFT 114 of transmitter 100 include microprocessors based controller. Demodulator 134 and FFT 130 of receiver 140 include microprocessors based controller. 

1-22. (canceled)
 23. A method for receiving a control channel format, the method comprising: receiving a control channel format indicator (CCFI) codeword; decoding the received CCFI codeword to identify a CCFI corresponding to the received CCFI codeword, the CCFI being associated with the number of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols used for transmission of control channels in a subframe; and receiving control data using the identified CCFI, wherein the identified CCFI is one of at least a first index, a second index, and a third index, and wherein the CCFI codeword was coded by a transmitter by mapping the identified CCFI to the CCFI codeword using a codebook that comprises at least “01101101101101101101101101101101”, “10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”.
 24. The method of claim 23, further comprising receiving modulation symbols modulated by QPSK modulation; and demodulating the modulation symbols to obtain the CCFI codeword.
 25. The method of claim 23, wherein CCFI is one of at least the first index, the second index, and the third index corresponding to “01101101101101101101101101101101”,“10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”, respectively.
 26. A method for transmitting a control channel format, the method comprising: determining, by a base station, a control channel format indicator (CCFI), the CCFI being associated with a number of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols used for transmission of control channels in a subframe; coding the CCFI to a CCFI codeword; transmitting the CCFI codeword and control data to one or more subscriber stations based on the CCFI; and wherein the CCFI is one of at least a first index, a second index, and a third index, and wherein the CCFI codeword is selected from a codebook for mapping the CCFI to the CCFI codeword, the codebook comprising at least “01101101101101101101101101101101”, “10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”.
 27. The method of claim 26, wherein CCFI is one of at least the first index, the second index, and the third index corresponding to “01101101101101101101101101101101”, “10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”, respectively.
 28. An apparatus comprising: a receiver configured to receive a control channel format indicator (CCFI) codeword, decode the received CCFI codeword to identify a CCFI corresponding to the received CCFI codeword, the CCFI being associated with the number of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols used for transmission of control channels in a subframe, and receive control data using the identified CCFI; and an antenna configured enable reception of the CCFI codeword and the control data, wherein the CCFI is one of at least a first index, a second index, and a third index, and wherein the CCFI codeword was coded by a transmitter by mapping the identified CCFI to the CCFI codeword using a codebook that comprises at least “01101101101101101101101101101101”, “10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”.
 29. The apparatus of claim 28, wherein the receiver is further configured to receive modulation symbols modulated by QPSK modulation, and demodulate the modulation symbols to obtain the CCFI codeword.
 30. The apparatus of claim 28, wherein CCFI is one of at least the first index, the second index, and the third index corresponding to “01101101101101101101101101101101”, “10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”, respectively.
 31. An apparatus comprising: a coder configured to determine a control channel format indicator (CCFI), the CCFI being associated with a number of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols used for transmission of control channels in a subframe, and code the CCFI to a CCFI codeword; and an RF amplifier configured to enable transmission of the CCFI codeword and control data to one or more subscriber stations based on the CCFI, wherein the CCFI is one of at least a first index, a second index, and a third index, and wherein the CCFI codeword is selected from a codebook for mapping the CCFI to the CCFI codeword, the codebook comprising at least “01101101101101101101101101101101”, “10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”.
 32. The apparatus of claim 31, wherein CCFI is one of at least the first index, the second index, and the third index corresponding to “01101101101101101101101101101101”, “10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”, respectively.
 33. A method for communicating a control channel format, the method comprising: determining, by a transmitter, a control channel format indicator (CCFI), the CCFI being associated with a number of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols used for transmission of control channels in a subframe; coding, by the transmitter, the CCFI to a CCFI codeword; transmitting the CCFI codeword and control data based on the CCFI; receiving the CCFI codeword at a receiver; decoding, by the receiver, the received CCFI codeword to identify the CCFI corresponding to the received CCFI codeword; and receiving, by the receiver, the control data using the identified CCFI, wherein the CCFI is one of at least a first index, a second index, and a third index, and wherein the CCFI codeword is selected from a codebook for mapping the CCFI to the CCFI codeword, the codebook comprising at least “01101101101101101101101101101101”, “10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”.
 34. The method of claim 33, further comprising receiving, by the receiver, modulation symbols modulated by QPSK modulation; and demodulating, by the receiver, the modulation symbols to obtain the CCFI codeword.
 35. The method of claim 33, wherein CCFI is one of at least the first index, the second index, and the third index corresponding to “01101101101101101101101101101101”, “10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”, respectively.
 36. A system comprising: a first device configured to determine a control channel format indicator (CCFI), the CCFI being associated with a number of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols used for transmission of control channels in a subframe, and code the CCFI to a CCFI codeword; and a second device configured to receive the CCFI codeword, decode the received CCFI codeword to identify the CCFI corresponding to the received CCFI codeword, and receive the control data using the identified CCFI, wherein the CCFI is one of at least a first index, a second index, and a third index, and wherein the CCFI codeword is selected from a codebook for mapping the CCFI to the CCFI codeword, the codebook comprising at least “01101101101101101101101101101101”, “10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”.
 37. The apparatus of claim 36, wherein the second device is further configured to receive modulation symbols modulated by QPSK modulation, and demodulate the modulation symbols to obtain the CCFI codeword.
 38. The apparatus of claim 36, wherein CCFI is one of at least the first index, the second index, and the third index corresponding to “01101101101101101101101101101101”, “10110110110110110110110110110110” and “11011011011011011011011011011011”, respectively. 